As Ram leaned over Angel, shuffling off his blue serge trousers in the back of the Volvo, and she inclined further backwards on the real leather seats – with their added spray of real leather scent – pulling her narrow skirt further up around her hips to demonstrate her assent, to quieten her howling, Edwin did indeed enter Anthea, not in the marital bed but in the second floor linen room of Rice Court. Here the shelves were neatly stacked with bedding of the old and tasteful kind, linens and cottons well-washed to a delicate flimsiness, folded neatly and flatly: woollen blankets likewise: not an acrylic duvet or a man-made fibre in sight.
Edwin, massively built, broad-shouldered, a softness of flesh covering muscle and nerve, smooth-chested, warm-skinned in spite of his blue blood, a chin naturally commanding but with a nature perpetually retreating, appearing to the outside world as a man extremely fortunate in his heredity, both physical and financial, supremely rational, calmly confident, pleasant, cooperative and intelligent, with untold shares invested in mysterious companies abroad, leaned back against the slatted laundry shelves, parted Anthea’s knees with his, pushed up between her thighs and with no ceremony entered her. Anthea barely blenched. She wore her headscarf of heavy cream silk, with a splatter of anchor chains and horses upon it. Edwin liked Anthea to wear the headscarf in the house and out of it, and Anthea, conscious always that her hair probably needed washing, usually made no objection. She wore only the headscarf. She was narrow-hipped to the point of skinniness. An observer would have found the woman wholly eclipsed by the man, by so many inches did his width surpass hers. Mrs MacArthur too often surprised them: bringing their breakfast on a tray. Here they were safe, for at least an hour or so.
Anthea was the natural Lady Rice, everyone agreed, well-suited to be mistress of this splendid house: she was plain, horsey, straightforward, blunt, boring, practical, with the wealth of generations behind her: she would tell him what to do while appearing to be told.
It was understood, but seldom said, that Edwin had succumbed to a passing infatuation when he married Angelica, married someone hopelessly unsuitable; a young woman with no background, who not only wouldn’t ride to hounds but spoke up for the hunt saboteurs; who, or so it was said, would refuse her husband his marital rights on one pretext or another, while still claiming his title. But Anthea understood that the way to keep a man happy was to give him as much sex as possible and give him no intellectual challenges. Men liked to rest, once adolescence was over. See Anthea now, leaning back into pieces of soap-scented linen, arms outstretched as if crucified against the shelves, hands clenching and un-clenching; eyes rolling, gasping: more, more! Oh darling! They seldom kiss – it seems too personal. That’s how Edwin likes sex; so does Anthea. Lots of sex, and all of it impersonal. The original Lady Rice, Angelica, ex-Kinky Virgin, turned out to be over-fussy. She required wooing; she had a notion of romance: she liked kissing, endearment, sweet words, tired easily, and in the end would rather plainly not fuck at all if she could help it. A man can grow weary of that kind of thing. Seduction and persuasion, foreplaying and tantalising, are all very well for a year or two, but ten years into a childless marriage can begin to seem to be onerous.
Trauma had rendered Lady Rice uncomfortably telepathic. And even as in the second floor linen cupboard of the ancestral home her rightful husband shuddered within her rival, Angel let out the bellow which was her birth-cry. The umbilical cord that tied Angel to Lady Rice was cut. Angel understood, as Angelica had not, or Jelly either, that life could be good. You just had to accept what it offered, and if the offering was male, you’d take it.